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Spotty, at best

I hate that my blogging is spotty, at best. I usually am on the internet while I eat, so while I can read a lot, I cannot type. This may be a random compilation of my life recently.

I will start with a cute story. Now that Caleb is talking, I am more material than previously available. Chloe is a screamer. She just is. She screams a lot. For no reason. In the car, our little screamer practices her trade. Caleb, oftentimes, joins in, which as you can imagine, makes for some fun car rides. I always swore I would not introduce my children to children’s music, but it turns out that this is the only thing that may curb the screaming. It does not always work, but it helps.
So, back to the story, yesterday while riding in the car, Chloe was screaming.
In the midst of this, I hear, “Mommy, Tow-ee (Chloe) needs a pacifier.” If you can imagine a sort of whiney tone, that’s how he said it. I am amazed what children pick up. Too bad for Caleb, Chloe is pacifier free.

Did you know in Canada they call pacifiers “soothers”? I think we should adopt that word. It sounds much better to soothe a child than pacify them. Just my opinion.

Potty training is going great. Caleb will not go in public, though, so he just holds it. I don’t think that is healthy. We’ll have to work on that!

I am reading a book on hospitality. I love reading on that subject. I have a longing to be very hospitable, but I still feel fairly insecure about it. We have people over a lot, but I wish I were more confident in it.
This book (I think its called A Heart That Says Welcome) is so awesome, so far…I have not finished it.
My favorite part so far is to not even consider being hospitable to others, without first taking care of your family. I heard that a few years ago, and it has been my motto….but I enjoyed reading more in-depth the heart behind it. I will not go to huge lengths to bless other people, if my own family is not taken care of first. If I bake a treat for an event, my family is always allowed to have some, even if its cutting into a pie that will look weird. Even though that is my goal, I was happy to be reminded of it.
The other thing is that hospitality and entertaining are totally different. Entertaining longs to impress people and worries about how things look. Hospitality longs to bless people and encourage them. A subpar meal in a warm home is better than an extravagant meal in a cold home.

Another point in the book that I liked was: only 2% of people want to come to a spotless house (you can be assured they have no kids LOL), but something like 87% want to come to a clutter-free, picked up home. It does not have to be spotless, just not overwhelmingly cluttered.

I like to clean, naturally (we all know that), but with two children, my house is not ever spotless. But I do appreciate that having order is somewhat appreciated by guests. It makes the effort worthwhile, in my opinion.

(I am practically ruining the book, so this is my last point). The author talks about Mary and Martha. For once, she points out that Martha is not entirely bad. It is healthy to prepare for guests. It is nice to cook/clean/etc to bless others. However, where she messed up was not laying aside her work to enjoy the guests. So the point is that you can have a clean home, decent food on the table, etc, but when guests arrive, spend time with them, not in the kitchen or cleaning up.

There is so much more, but I do not want to completely plagiarize the book. I guess I get encouraged that hospitality need not be extravagant to be welcoming.